Cambodia Photos

For me, Cambodia was always about its recent history: the killing fields, Khmer Rouge… I knew that Pol Pot had managed to kill about 25% of Cambodia’s population (which is much more than Stalin had managed (as a percentage, not in absolute number)). However, I didn’t know anything about Cambodia’s amazing ancient history. That says a lot about the education in Soviet schools.

The first thing any Cambodian will proudly tell you was that once most of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos were part of the Khmer Empire. Angkor, it has recently been discovered, had been the largest ever pre-industrial city in the world. That was about 600-700 years ago. Later, the empire disintegrated, shrunk, and in the middle of the 20th century, the country managed to set the ‘Guinness world record’ for the largest number of executions per capita. However, Cambodians still remember the glorious times. I was born and lived a large portion of my life in a country with a very similar attitude.

Since the collapse of the Khmer empire, Angkor was almost totally consumed by the jungle and many parts of it still look like illustrations from Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”.

Below are Cambodia photos – images of a country with a rich (and mostly unknown) ancient history, and a shocking (even horrifying) ‘recent’ past.